Wheat germ agglutinin affinity of murine hemopoietic stem cell subpopulations is an inverse function of their long-term repopulating ability in vitro and in vivo.

Hemopoietic stem cells show extensive heterogeneity with respect to their proliferative potential and activity. We have recently reported that the accepted technique for sorting stem cells on the basis of high affinity for the lectin wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) did not select for cells initiating long-term production of new stem cells on a stromal layer in vitro. We have therefore reinvestigated the expression of cell surface sialic acid residues in the hemopoietic stem cell compartment by sorting murine bone marrow cells on the basis of affinity for WGA. Frequency analysis of long-term bone marrow culture initiating stem cells was done using the cobblestone-area-forming cell (CAFC) assay with limiting dilution set-up. In vivo stem cell quality was determined by spleen colony formation, marrow-repopulating ability (MRA) and long-term repopulating ability (LTRA) using sex-mismatched hemopoietic chimerism. The data indicate that MRA and LTRA in vivo and in vitro are among the most WGA-dim cells. In contrast, the enrichment factors for splenic colony-forming units (CFU-S) at day 12 and transient CAFC increase with increasing WGA affinity. These characteristics allowed us to concentrate LTRA cells 590- to 850-fold over their activity in normal bone marrow without significant enrichment of day-12 CFU-S. The data reveal that WGA affinity is an inverse function of the primitiveness of murine hemopoietic stem cells and that long-term production of blood cells in vivo and in vitro is provided for by primitive cells that are physically separable from the vast majority of day-12 CFU-S. In addition the data reveal, that the CAFC frequency at day 28-35 of a graft strongly correlates with the number of cells required to induce 40% donor-type chimerism at 15 months post-transplantation and thus predicts the in vivo LTRA of a graft.